Shownotes
Pouring one out for the people who decided to do Dry January in what’s arguably the longest three weeks in the recorded history of mankind. 🫠 Good news though, the world’s most important media platform (Media Diet on Plex) is back online due to eleventh hour mouth to mouth resuscitation. Thanks Trump! Happy Ceasefire!
Let’s watch something.
Nosferatu (2024)
Robert Eggers - ★★★ - watch trailer
Robbert Egger’s (The Lighthouse, The Northman) soft-horror interpretation of the German vampire classic holds up extremely well with a bombastically shot first act. Then the silly plot overtakes the eerie vibes and the tense atmosphere and horrible beauty in the scenes get lost in exposition dumps.
Criticism notwithstanding, I enjoyed Eggers’ version of Nosferatu as maggot-infested monster and adored Lilly Rose-Depp’s physical performance as horny mother-of-goth dick enchanter1. However I think I speak for everyone when I say that we absolutely, positively do not need any more Dracula remakes.
From the category “Goth Porn For Cottagecore Girlies”
Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)
directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld — ★★★★ — watch trailer
I’m still trying to catch up with all lesbian movies directed by lesbian-identifying, uh, lesbians. Kissing Jessica Stein is not one of them, sorry.
What it is instead: an infamous rom-com among lesbians. Lest I spoil a 25 year old movie, let me just say this: A very neurotic and very straight woman in New York finds out she is actually a bisexual when she falls in love with another woman. Lesbians hate it for its depiction of queerness and its male-centric characters. But that’s the real world, and even more so 20 years on. I gotta say: the “tragic ending” is painfully relatable2. Or, as one Letterboxd user precisely put it:
you don’t understand, this is how lesbians make friends!!!
From the category “Young Jon Hamm Jumpscare”
🍿 More Movies
Queer (2024 — Luca Guadagnino, ★★ ) — I don’t like movies without women. This is a movie without women. A pasty, sweaty, old Daniel Craig desperately lusts after a bisexual twink for two hours on an eccentric soundstage before having a drug-induced psychodramatic breakdown to realize he’s just an old man with a boner. Would have rated this even less if it weren’t for the impeccable soundtrack (this is the most fucked up and anachronistic use of Nirvana’s Come As You Are ever)
All We Imagine as Light (2024 — Payal Kapadia, ★★★) — Powerful. Raw. Poetic. And… boring? The shots of Mumbai are dreamy, vivid, alive, full of love and pain. However the intertwining stories of the three nurses stumbles along in muted tones when it could have sprinted confidently. It’s really beautiful and deserving of every award it can get, but I wanted more energy.
Black Dog (2024 — Guan Hu, ★★★) — A Chinese man with impeccable workwear and heart-wrenching expression anchors this film. It’s a big, exuberant movie - the CGI and the shots here are unbelievable for a story of this scale - built around a small story of an ex-convict connecting with a dog. The world-building in the Chinese desert town overrun by dogs is fascinating. Stylish and heavy on urban decay, Black Dog is a neo-western that ran a bit too long for me but was ultimately more rewarding than All We Imagine As Light.
Emilia Perez (2024 — Jacques Audiard, ★★) — Show me one (!) person who liked Emilia Perez. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has even completed watching it, and this movie is set to win Best Picture at the Academy. That being said, I didn’t completely hate it? I mean it’s mad, but is it madder than the concept of musicals in general? Maybe Queer should have been a musical. Like, there’s a good movie in Emilia Perez somewhere. Alas, the same can’t be said about the music. Of course everyone has seen the penis to vagina anthem, but I’ve watched all of it and believe me, some songs are even worse 😭
A Real Pain (2024 — Jessie Eisenberg, ★★★★) — In a new episode of Kieran Culkin plays himself and Jessie Eisenberg loves overacting: A movie about depression, mental health, grief and Jewishness. But mostly about being lost in your 30s3. Depressed people — they are irresistibly vulnerable and dangerously captivating and then they will fuck up your life and theirs at the same time. At 90 minutes, this was really good, but it kinda made me feel really bad.
Seed of a Sacred Fig (2024 — Mohammad Rasoulof, ★★★) - Feels important but heavy-handed — the family as metaphor for the state, with a father who represents the old and the daughters who represent the future, bored me immensely. But I respect that the movie was made without the presence of the director, secretly shot in Iran, to tell a wild family drama set in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
Y2K (2024 — Kyle Mooney, ★ ) — What an amazing waste of 90s references. Dumb movies are an art. This ain’t it.
Chime (2024 — Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ★★★★ ) — Movies as ambiance. 45 minutes of contagious violence. Yes, 45 minutes, my new favorite movie length.
📺 On TV
I know I’ve written about Landman but post season finale I have to add further remarks. This is the Emilia Perez of television: it has the sheen of a prestige series, but also a two episode arc about going to a strip club with the elderly? This is all so stupid, even for a series that half-mocks climate change and glorifies fracking and pretends beer is not alcohol. So if anyone started watching this based on my recommendation, please be assured that I know this isn’t actually good. This is an anonymous orgy-level kind of fun — once you’re in, you’re just kinda getting fucked by people with differing political views. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t understand anything that’s going on in The Agency. There are multiple convoluted plot-lines in this American spy thriller and I can follow exactly none of them. Who’s Richard Gere supposed to be? What is the girl doing in Iran? Who is Felix? No clue. I am here for Michael Fassbender and Michael Fassbender only.
Okay but what’s actually good is The Pitt on HBO Max. Ladies, this is the IV I’m on until April. A medical drama in the style of the legendary ER, the first season is one 15-hour shift, an hour per episode, which sets up a compelling structure. It’s gnarly though. Not dropping all the episodes at the same time is a crime against humanity. My methadone is a fifteen seasons rewatch of ER. That’s 255 episodes — see you never!
Oh and, Severance is back. I jumped right into the first episode because despite the three year break, I remember everything that happened. That’s how good it is. I know it’s not for everyone, but the first season was truly up there with The Wire and Mad Men for me. Let’s see how it goes.
🎧 Hearing
Listening to Bad Bunny’s new album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS on repeat completely shredded any sense or logic in my recommendations. It’s all Spanish now.
And: Finding long forgotten 90s gems in the ER soundtrack.
📖 Reading
Very unseasonal for the winter since it’s such a beach read, but wrapped up “Hot Milk” by Deborah Levy and pretty much underlined every carefully crafted sentence.
Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered. As a child, I used to cover my face with my hands so that no one would know I was there. And then I discovered that covering my face made me more visible because everyone was curious to see what it was I wanted to hide in the first place.
Such a smart novel on being young and lost, emancipating yourself from your family and shedding identity. And while not exactly a romance, there’s definitely a lesbian subplot full of mommy issues.
Post-Script
Everyone is really lonely and it shows. Fashion has gone full circle to normcore, so I can finally be hip again. Flaking is standard now, sorry to the extroverts.
Mild spoiler alert: I do understand that it’s potentially harmful to younger viewers to regard same-sex relationships as phases to pass through, but I believe that a) sexuality is fluid and whatever, and b) the problem with this movie is that the creepy guy wins the woman over. Which makes sense because a guy wrote and directed the movie. I’m not blind to the controversy, but I think for a big budget rom-com, I’ve seen way worse and more infuriating depictions of queerness.
A Real Pain aligns with the nascent film theme of Feeling Lost In Your 30s. It makes sense - Millennials are often unsettled in their 30s, childless, building a career, trying to make sense of the world. A prolonged coming of age for a whole generation. Or just watch Past Lives already